Barracuda Email Protection vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Barracuda Email Protection
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Barracuda Email Protection is an email security solution that uses machine learning to provide protection against threats. It combines email gateway defenses and API-based inbox defense to prevent attacks, respond to threats in real time, and secure Microsoft 365 data.N/A
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense provides protection against email threats that compromise an organization’s brand and operations. Its advanced threat detection capabilities uncover known, emerging and targeted threats. And it expands the scope of organizations' defenses to detect dangerous threats and rapidly search for and remediate threats across security controls. Secure Email Threat Defense's Artificial Intelligence and machine…N/A
Pricing
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Features
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Barracuda Email Protection
8.5
19 Ratings
2% above category average
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
8.7
28 Ratings
4% above category average
Anti-malware9.019 Ratings8.716 Ratings
Customizability7.118 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Data Loss Protection8.015 Ratings8.215 Ratings
Threat Detection8.719 Ratings9.528 Ratings
Sandboxing9.014 Ratings8.115 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption10.014 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Management Tools7.719 Ratings8.827 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Small Businesses
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Score 9.4 out of 10
Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Avanan
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Score 9.8 out of 10
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Score 9.8 out of 10
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User Ratings
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(59 ratings)
9.5
(28 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(3 ratings)
5.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(12 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(12 ratings)
8.2
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Barracuda Email ProtectionCisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Likelihood to Recommend
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
I would definitely recommend it due to the decent pricing. I wish the MS built-in M365 tools were better, but Barracuda does a good job of taking their place. For industries that need DLP on their email, like healthcare, banking, and education, Barracuda provides a reliable product for a good cost. The additional services you get, malware/AV filtering, URL filtering, spam protection, business continuity, those are all icing on the cake. The only issues we've ever really had with them is that it will sometimes take a back/forth string of emails and decide randomly to encrypt it, so what was a flowing benign conversation is now locked behind a wall for recipients. As the sender, you have no idea when it's going to decide to do this and have to remember to tag emails with a decrypt tag long before it happens or face the consequences
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Cisco
I will certainly recommend Cisco Secure Email to my friends/colleagues, one look at the dashboard/statistics will actually convince any IT professional to use this product. We noticed an outstanding improvement in Email quality, most of the SPAM emails are caught, and our users have never been happier!
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Pros
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
  • Barracuda Essentials Spam Filtering works and it is very easy to add or remove senders from the Spam filter lists.
  • Barracuda Essentials provides excellent protection from Phishing and other Malware.
  • Barracuda Essentials email encryption is so easy to use and easy to setup. Our users love it.
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Cisco
  • Manages Junk Mail Well-We configured and tested our configuration to filter out the majority of junk mail hitting our inboxes.
  • Manages Graymail-We configured and tested our Cisco ETD for graymail filtering and reduced the amount of unwanted advertising and other legitimate emails.
  • Creating unique policies that were tailored to block or allow emails from certain senders.
  • Stopped malicious email traffic (e.g., malicious attachments and links) with rules for identifying and stripping potentially malicious attachments or links.
  • Allows easy configuration for other email security measures such as SPF, DMARC and DKIM.
  • Cisco engineers provide an annual free security health check. We took advantage of several security health checks where Cisco certified engineers go over the security setting of our Cisco ETD. We were provided a written report that highlighted strengths and weaknesses of our Cisco ETD setup.
  • Monitoring email traffic flow is almost overwhelming with the amount of information you can obtain from the portal. This gives valuable information to IT staff in terms of volume and type of emails the company is receiving.
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Cons
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
  • The product is pretty solid so I am not sure how it can be improved. One thing I noticed recently, I am not getting the emails back from Sentinel when I send in a "miss". Used to be I got an email back saying "sorry we missed this, we are improving." That does happen anymore, so I am assuming that when I send a miss, the AI is getting better.
  • I would expand this to cover all kinds of email fraud like ransomware and spam rather than creating another product.
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Cisco
  • The web interface is definitely dated
  • The software updates to the user interface and the documentation online are not congruent. Some docs are old and information is lacking to make changes
  • The email filtering and email search features are really dated. And other tools are more user friendly
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Likelihood to Renew
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Although cost competitive, we still feel like we are not digging deep enough to train our staff. We have little to no way other than digging through reports that have not proven to be adequately documented (hey you, Barracuda campaign reports) to identify and require users to take more training who have not passed their requirements.
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Cisco
There is a 50/50 chance that we will renew. We are in the middle of moving from on-prem to the cloud so we may not need it once we are fully migrated.
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Usability
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Regarding usability, we like it to be an easy solution to implement and configure on the server. Routine backups are made frequently and reports are issued for control and analysis by information security teams. It has great integration with the cloud and encryption.
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Cisco
Good interface, easy to use and set up. If there were any issues, there is very good documentation and videos that one can follow for additional setup and best practices. As typical with most Cisco solutions, there are more features than needed for our purposes but good to know they are there in case of future needs
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Reliability and Availability
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's availability is great and reliable when you need it most. We haven't had any noticeable outages or issues.
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Support Rating
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
I have not had to use customer support yet which goes to show the effectiveness of the program. It also shows how easy the program is to use for the average person with no experience using this type of program. Our IT department also does a great job at teaching us to detect emails with malware that in combination with this software issues rarely arise even though we have over 500 employees.
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Cisco
Cisco always provides good support for all of their solutions. As usual, Cisco support is top notch, from their initial sales teams to the post support, we have always felt comfortable with using Cisco solutions. Their documentation is also very good, frequent updates to the documents with feature enhancements and support notes. All around very good suppot
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Implementation Rating
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
It was "stupid easy" from the technical side.
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Cisco
The implementation went well, no issues or problems to report.
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Alternatives Considered
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
We have used several email solutions over the years, some were bought and killed off by larger companies. Barracuda Email Protection offers a very complete solution and has all the tools that we were looking for, and our MSP offered it.
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Cisco
Cisco SETD, with a broad deployment and full integration with Microsoft 365 gives us a strong protection, especially where we can leverage its strengths: Microsoft‑365 integration, mailbox remediation, policy enforcement, and your visibility across Cisco tools.


Proofpoint is better around user awareness (warning tags etc.), and continuity/archiving. Considering that we have a full Cisco stack, choosing Proofpoint would come with higher cost, learning curve, possible redundancy of features, licensing complexity.
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Return on Investment
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
  • This tool was supplied free with out Email Security, so its come at no cost
  • This tool has helped us meet requirements by our insurance to train users on the risks of phishing
  • However, the dated interface slows down what should be seamless adoption
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Cisco
  • Our email security has increased.
  • Users are now more confident about their email security.
  • Management of threat detection and prevention has become easier.
  • Finer controls on spam filtering gives customization capability.
  • GDPR compliance ensures peace of mind from a regulation point of view.
  • The quarantine feature has ensured that we do not lose important emails while they are being analyzed.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense Screenshots

Screenshot of an Impact Report showing efficacy metrics and ROI indicatorsScreenshot of a detailed view of phishing messagesScreenshot of the dashboard